We are convinced that he masters not one, not two, but (almost) all the tricks of the trade and that, with a hide tanned by years of meetings and negotiations of all kinds, he carries a guarantee of success and commercial performance, a passport to exceeding objectives!
What if things weren't that simple? Is the senior sales representative always really performing well? What are their weaknesses? What balance of power does it bring? In short...how do you manage a senior sales representative?
Not necessarily competent, sometimes exhausted, often more resistant to change, the senior salesperson is above all a specific profile that should be approached with care to make them a real asset.
A senior employee isn't necessarily effective!
In sports, just because you have 10 years of experience doesn't mean you become a Zidane or a Michael Jordan. Conversely, you can be young and very successful. It's exactly the same in sales professions: "senior" does not necessarily rhyme with "competence" and "autonomy."
A sales manager recently shared an anecdote about a 45-year-old salesperson with 20 years of experience, who was quite successful. The salesperson was transferred, at their request, to another region, and there, disaster struck: they couldn't achieve anything anymore. No more prospects, no more appointments, no more sales. Despite their knowledge and experience, the person was completely stuck!
The mistake is believing that a senior employee knows everything and hiding behind this certainty ("beware of belief traps") without seeing the reality of the situation. You have to take the time to assess their skills, identify what's missing, and see how the person works. They may not necessarily know how to organize themselves, find their prospects, manage their time, or adopt new tools. A senior employee always has areas for improvement, but may sometimes have less desire to fill them, perhaps less motivation, which should further encourage the manager to be attentive.
Worse, a senior salesperson will often find it difficult to share their struggles. Where a junior is in the learning phase and shows enthusiasm, the senior will quickly feel illegitimate, challenged, and their self-esteem will be weakened. In the case of our reassigned salesperson, for more than 6 months they hid behind reassuring words, claiming to be discovering a new market. But that wasn't the problem...
From pure management
With a senior employee, you're often in a situation of pure management. To revisit the story of our transformed salesperson, after a period of careful observation and consistently poor results, the manager focuses on finding a solution. He analyzes factual elements, remains assertive, treats the salesperson as an equal, and offers a mirror effect. After a period of discussion, he understands: the methods in the new region are different. The senior employee was used to having appointments made for them, whereas in their new position, they have to do it themselves. They have to hunt for leads, but they don't know how! Conscious and unconscious barriers related to their senior status prevent them from expressing their difficulties. They felt they didn't deserve their salary, felt like they were disappointing, and didn't dare ask for help. Negative spiral.
In this example, the manager was able to support their sales representative with empathy. Once the diagnosis was made and motivation confirmed, all that remained was to propose a corrective plan, provide perspective, and provide support!
Motivation is a particularly important point in the management of senior sales representatives. Sales remain one of the most difficult professions. Motivation is attacked daily by refusals, you have to start from scratch with each prospect, without any certainty. A senior, with his years of experience, can end up becoming demotivated. Therefore, the manager must be able to identify the problems of his sales representative and, more than with another, pay attention and know his way of working. He must determine what makes people tick: remuneration, recognition, challenge...
However, be aware that one common bias when dealing with a senior person is to lose objectivity, be impressed, be afraid, and ultimately not be clear in the exchange. This can lead to miscommunication and create an engagement problem.
The senior salesperson, a champion of immobility?
The senior, with their career behind them, will potentially have more reservations about being challenged. They will tend to rely on certainties, on their habits, and will find it more difficult to make the effort to fill their gaps (which they will find it difficult to recognize). It can even become a kind of posture over time: 'I've always done it this way, I'm too old to change!'
A senior employee can more easily compensate for a weakness with their strengths compared to a junior employee. These strengths are often genuine assets to capitalize on but are rarely sufficient in the face of the current evolution of sales approaches. As for the areas for improvement, the manager must work with their employee to bring them up to the minimum required level.
We are also going to have generational problems. Social selling, for example, can become a contentious issue when a young person is comfortable with it and a senior person is lost.
Leverage experience.
Of course, managers should not neglect a high-performing senior salesperson. In this situation, the instinct is to stop monitoring them, reassured by their figures, and therefore invest time in juniors or salespeople who are struggling more: this is a mistake. In the long run, this can be perceived by the salesperson as a lack of recognition, leading to a loss of motivation. It is essential to remain attentive and precise, and to leverage their performance to share it within the team.
In a mentoring approach, you can rely on senior staff to support and reassure. KESTIO is currently working for a CEO who manages a team of 5 sales representatives, one of whom generates 50% of the revenue. He wants to appoint him as manager, which places an obligation on the sales representative to succeed, both in relation to the others and to himself, but also for the CEO who would lose his best salesperson if he did not succeed in this evolution!
In this case, KESTIO supports the salesperson to develop their skills as a manager.
KESTIO, with its short and pragmatic approach, distributed over time, facilitates this management in small increments to maintain the right balance within the team between generations. KESTIO provides regular action in the right place.
The senior is also a bit of the memory. Their ability to bring anecdotes, stories, to create links and a common and shared knowledge will strengthen the team. It is up to the manager to activate this dimension.
To stay competitive and maximize your chances of converting leads into future customers, it is important to optimize the performance of your commercial assets. Find out how by watching this webinar:
